


Shirt Monkey

by akamarykate



Category: Psych, Wonderfalls
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Into A Bar Challenge, Post-Series, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-13
Updated: 2010-11-13
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:42:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1642106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akamarykate/pseuds/akamarykate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Jaye Tyler walks into a bar and meets...Henry Spencer.</p><p>Takes place after the end of Wonderfalls and before the Psych pilot; slight speculative spoilers (if you can call them that) for things Brian Fuller mentioned might have happened if Wonderfalls had a second season, and for a plot point about Henry being "away" from Santa Barbara prior to the Psych pilot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shirt Monkey

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted to DW in November, 2010 for the Into A Bar Crossover Challenge

"Take his hat."

Jaye jumped. From behind her sunglasses, she glared to the left, then to the right. All she saw was a bunch of older guys in windbreakers and camouflage trying to pretend they weren't looking at her, the lone female on the fishing pier. There wasn't another face--stuffed, plastic, metal, or otherwise--in sight.

"Take his hat."

"I'm on vacation," she whispered between her teeth. San Diego was about as far as she could get from Niagara and still be in the continental U.S. in terms of both geography and attitude. Sure, the ocean sounded like the Falls, but it smelled different--fishier, brinier, coconut-oilier. The sun here was brighter, and the people were laid back to the extreme. Not one of them seemed likely to have her locked up in a psych ward.

But some things never changed, no matter where she went; every interesting attraction and pretty beach had a souvenir shop, and every souvenir shop was full of...stuff. Stuff with _faces_. She'd come out onto the fishing pier to get away from faces, but the faces wouldn't let her get away.

"Take his hat."

The guy in the camouflage jacket--probably original from World War II--moved, and she saw him. It. Whatever. Another guy, younger than the rest, his nearly bald head bent over the hook he was baiting. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt. 

Across his back, monkeys swung from palm trees. Were there really monkeys in Hawaii? She wasn't sure, but right now, standing in the bright California sun, she hated Hawaii, hated its shirts, and hated guys who wore them.

Most of all, she hated monkeys. Especially that monkey, the one just under the guy's shoulder, who pointed at the old man next to Mr. Hawaii. He leaned far out over the pier, watching his bobber, and he wore a battered blue captain's hat.

The monkey's face broke into a broad, evil monkey grin. "Take his hat."

Jaye bit her lip. She'd earned this vacation. She took one step back, then two.

"TakehishattakehishatTAKEHISHAT!"

This was her life now, wasn't it?

With one last glare at the monkey, she snuck up behind the captain, snatched his hat, and ran. There was a shout, but the only one who looked able to catch her was Mr. Hawaii. She had a head start, and all the motivation she needed to get away from the monkey. 

When she was halfway down the pier, though, there was a huge _crack_ , and the shouts changed. She turned back. A few yards behind her, so did Mr. Hawaii.

Part of the railing had given way, and was hanging out over the ocean by what looked like a couple of screws and splinters. It was the part of the railing that the captain had been leaning over when she'd taken his hat. His friends slapped him on the back, congratulating him on his narrow escape.

Jaye sighed. "Figures." She tossed the hat back at Mr. Hawaii; she didn't look to see if he caught it as she stalked off the pier.

~*~*~

A few minutes later, she was standing at the door of her rental car, staring at her cell phone and the car key. Which were in the cup holder. Which was inside the car. Which was locked.

"Perfect." She rested her forehead on the hot roof of the car and jiggled the door handle a few more times, even though it was futile. Maybe there was some way to kick out a window. Probably the tire iron in the trunk would do it, if there actually was a tire iron in the trunk. If she had any way to open the trunk. And if she knew what a tire iron looked like.

She tried taking deep breaths, like her counselor was always telling her to do. What did it matter how she breathed, if she was stranded here? And just whose brilliant idea had it been to get away from it all, to take a vacation as far from Niagara and the voices and her family as she could get?

Well, okay, it had been hers, but her counselor had gone right along with it. 

She could just hear her mother now, if she called and tried to explain her predicament. Oh, she'd be sympathetic in the moment, sure, but she'd gloat in her own passive-aggressive way forever after. Aaron and Sharon would never let her live it down.

 _Bomp_. The car shuddered, and Jaye looked up. Mr. Hawaii stood on the passenger side, arms folded on the roof. 

"Got a problem?"

"No." 

She did not have _a_ problem. She was pretty sure she had several problems, and was about to have one more. This guy was old enough to be her dad, but not, unlike the other fishermen, her grandfather. In fact, he was so unlike them--tan but not weathered, muscled and quick enough to catch up with her--that she wondered what the heck he was doing hanging out on the pier. Maybe one of the grandpas was his dad. 

Or maybe he was a serial killer. It would be just her luck to come to the sunniest, most laid-back city on the continent and run into a serial killer.

"Looks like you have a problem." He looked down at the cup holder, then back at Jaye. "Looks like you're locked out of your car."

"Oh. Yeah. That."

He strolled over to her side of the car and pointed at the door with his fishing rod. "May I?"

Jaye backed away. "Sure." Where could she run, if he tried to kill her--serially--with the fishing pole? There was a bar across the street that looked about as rundown as the pier, a phone booth that had no phone at the other end of the lot, and a convenience store about a block past that. 

He flattened out some doo-dad on the end of the pole and stuck into the lock. "It's easy to forget the keys when you're driving a rental." He laughed at her look. "Spotted you as a tourist right away. It's your nose. Sunburned. One of those details that's easy to catch. I used to be good at that."

"Used to?" Jaye stuck her hands in her pockets. Nothing in there but a gum wrapper, and she was pretty sure she couldn't use that for a weapon. Maybe if she stayed by the trunk, she could get him to open it when he got into the car, and then she could grab the tire iron--if she could figure out what that was.

He turned his attention back to the lock, jimmying the end of the pole around inside it. "I had no idea that railing was going to give way. What clued you in?"

She looked at his back; the monkey just grinned at her, like all the other monkeys hidden in all the other palm trees on the shirt. "I...uh...just like hats."

"Right." He turned the rod and the lock popped open. "There you go."

Jaye didn't move. "You're really good at that, huh?"

"This? Part of my job."

"Breaking and entering?" In order to kill people. Serially.

"Helping damsels in distress." He leaned his fishing pole against the car and stuck out his hand. "Henry Spencer. Ex-cop, Santa Barbara P.D."

Or...that. "Can you--I mean, no offense, but can you prove it?"

"Smart." He pulled a wallet out of his pocket and flipped it open to a picture--same guy with a lot more hair, wearing a cop uniform, his arm around a kid in a plaid shirt. "I like smart." He looked at the picture and shook his head. "So long as you're not too smart for your own good."

A laugh shot out of her before she could stop it. "That's never been an issue, trust me." Too educated for her own good, possibly. But not too smart. If she were smart, she'd be able to ignore the monkey peeking over Henry Spencer's shoulder.

"Bring him home."

She bit down hard on her tongue before, "Home _where_? Home _how_?" could slip out, along with, "He's old enough to be my _dad_." She'd listened to the monkey once, and that was enough.

Henry opened the door. "There you go. Unless--" He nodded toward the bar. "Can I buy you a drink?"

"Uh..." Nothing said that ex-cops couldn't be serial killers, did it? 

"Look," Henry said, "don't take this the wrong way. I'm only asking because you remind me of my son, and I kind of--well, I miss him. And you still haven't said how you knew about the railing."

No way was she telling that to a cop, even if he was an ex-cop, and even if the answer was the ex-cop's shirt. "I really don't--"

"Bring him home," the monkey insisted, with its stupid monkey grin.

Jaye sighed. She was not bringing a stranger home, serial killer, ex-cop, or otherwise. Home was too far, and she didn't want to go there herself right now. But the monkey wasn't going to let this rest; even if she drove off now, he'd find her later. Maybe the bar was the best possible compromise. The last thing she needed was an ex-cop-possibly-serial-killer showing up at her hotel.

"Okay," she said, and Henry lit up like a Christmas tree. She kept her distance as they crossed the lot, because she was pretty sure if she got too close, he'd throw an arm around her shoulder. He seemed like that kind of guy, that kind of lonely.

Maybe he wasn't a serial killer after all.

~*~*~

By the time she'd started her second beer, Jaye was sure--ninety-five percent sure, anyway--that Henry wasn't a serial killer. He was a little weird, sure--take his obsession with hats--but not creepy serial killer weird.

"C'mon, just try." Henry put his beer down. "Close your eyes and tell me how many hats are in this bar."

Jaye looked around the dimly lit room. Even if she could have seen into some of the corners, there was no way she was counting hats. "Did this work on your son?"

"No." Henry slumped back in his chair. "No, it didn't."

The monkey shot up again, leaning over Henry's shoulder. "Bring him home." 

She clutched her beer bottle a little tighter, resisting the urge to throw it at the monkey. A thought tickled the back of her brain, and she worked against the beer fog and her monkey-based frustration to put it into words. "So you're from Santa Barbara?"

Henry nodded. "Born and raised."

"Is that where your son is?"

"Far as I know."

She wanted to ask why, if Henry missed him so much, he wasn't there too, but it was probably too soon for that. "And I remind you of him--how, exactly?"

With a shrug, Henry downed the rest of his beer and gestured for another one. "You're about the same age, but mostly, it's the railing. Shawn's always figuring stuff like that out. Or he was, back before he dropped out of school and went off to..." He circled a hand in the air. "...do whatever he does now."

Jaye wanted to ask--she really wanted to ask--what Shawn Spencer's position was on supposedly inanimate objects with faces. "School can be overrated," she said instead. "I mean, I did more than my share of time in college, and all it got me was a job at a souvenir shop in Niagara. Has your son ever worked in a souvenir shop?"

"Maybe. I lost track of him for a while after the divorce, and since then, whenever I run into him, it doesn't end up well. He sure knew his hats, though. Are you sure you don't--"

"I'm sure." 

"Bring him home," the monkey chittered.

"I'm trying!"

Henry blinked at her over his raised beer bottle. "Trying to do what?"

Jaye drew a deep breath. "I'm...trying...to figure out why anyone wouldn't want to hang out with a dad like you. I mean, you fish, you rescue damsels in distress, you buy the beer. What's not to like?"

"A lot, apparently. I made mistakes with Shawn. I pushed him too hard when he was a kid, trying to turn him into a cop like me. All the times I made him pay attention, all the..." He trailed off, looking somewhere over her shoulder. 

"Hat games?" Jaye guessed.

"Yeah." Despite his Hawaiian shirt and tan, Henry looked as down in the dumps as any Niagara Falls resident during February. "I have no idea what I thought I was doing, trying to raise a kid."

"Look, Henry." Jaye leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Parents do all kinds of things to mess kids up. Heck, my parents had me institutionalized for a while. It was a big misunderstanding," she said when his mouth opened. The monkey sniggered. "The point is, we survive your mistakes. And kids, well, we do plenty of things that confuse our parents. Sometimes we do them _in order to_ confuse our parents, sure, but mostly we don't really know what we're doing either."

"But we survive each other."

Jaye nodded.

"How?"

"You got me." Jaye looked at the monkey, but he just kept showing his teeth. Some help he was. "The thing is, even when I'm pissed at my parents--and believe me, I've been plenty pissed at them--I still want them to act like parents, you know? As much as I want them to back off, I don't want them to stop trying."

Henry laughed ruefully. "Well that explains everything. Makes it as clear as--as clear as--"

"Life." Or shirt monkeys. "Maybe you should call your son, or go see him. You might be surprised."

"Maybe." Henry's grin didn't disappear as he leaned toward her. "Now, about that railing..."

The monkey laughed a decidedly evil monkey laugh and slipped away. Jaye started counting hats.


End file.
